Monday, October 28, 2013

Our book lover

Biscuit has loved books ever since he got here. Of course, that could be because Jeff and I are both word people or because we've been reading to him since he got here.But right now, it's hard to figure out which books to tackle.At day care, Biscuit is learning sight words. You know how every few years the way kids are taught things changes? Well, they don't do phonics as much anymore, which is how we learned to read. Now, they start with sight words, which is a list of about 100 words that the kids tackle a few at a time. It seems to me more like a memorization process, but by building a few at at time, Biscuit has had good retention of the words.This week's words are: am, can, I, the.To help Biscuit, I wrote them on his chalkboard easel. So he sees the words every time he walks from the kitchen to the living room.The only problem with this week's words is that Jeff has found a sentence in them. So now, we're all three walking around the house, and in very weird voices, saying, "I am the can."Have you ever seen actors repeat lines over and over with the stress on different words?"I AM the can.""I am THE can.""I am the CAN."Yeah, we're silly, silly people. But it makes Biscuit laugh, and it's helping him learn his words.But back to books.As far as stories go, Biscuit is enjoying chapter books, especially the Magic Tree House series, in which a young boy and a young girl can time travel in a tree house they found in the woods. They have adventures with knights in Medieval times. They meet up with some pirates who are looking for treasure. They take a journey with some dolphins in the ocean. Just all kinds of fun stories.But since he's learning words, he also enjoys looking at some of the simpler books he has, trying to find the sight words he's learned to far.So we're trying to embrace both sides. We read him chapter books and let him show off his new skills with the easy books. Win-win.